Collaboration

Disruptive Innovation

Clayton Christensen in his book The Innovator’s Dilemma showed us that the business drivers of our current customers blinds us to emerging but currently unsuitable technology that eventually takes over our market. This has led to a focus on Innovation that looks to be disruptive as its primary goal. And I have come to the conclusion that this has hampered our attempts at Innovation. We have set the bar too high. And this isn’t what Innovation was about. Just a way of looking at a specific type of Innovation.

In my article on Light Cameras I covered a new concept in camera’s developed by Dr Rajiv Laroia who co-founded Light. The Light L16 is a new camera concept using multiple lenses and cameras to fuse a composite image given focal ranges and exposure ranges not possible in conventional cameras. An excellent example of disrupting innovation. and also an excellent example of The Innovator’s Dilemma.

Announced in 2016 and expected to be ready that year it was not shipping until mid 2017. Why? Because it is hard to do and the ASIC development was late and the core idea of doing the fusion inside the camera in real time is proving harder than expected and data transfers are too slow (they are transferring 16 cameras worth of data for 1 picture) and focus isn’t good enough and low light performance also isn’t good enough and did I mention it is hard!

I’m still impressed with the idea. But like all true disruptions it isn’t good enough when it first launches. Look at the modern DSLR. It shows you the picture you will take, it is seconds from taking the picture to being able to look at it. Focus is multi zone and you can decide how sharp or soft you want it and where. Auto exposure can handle high backlight shots and a wide range of light conditions. Fantastic. And decade in the making. The Light L16 isn’t surpassing it yet but you can see the trajectory and the camera of the future shows its potential now in what they are doing.

I’m also impressed with the open approach they are taking with customers. In a recent article Dr Rajiv Laroia explained why the Light L16 was delayed, how they were supporting their customers and what the plan for addressing the issues is. An excellent example of Collaboration with their customers rather than bunkering down defensively.

This still looks like it will be a success. It will just take longer than any of us expected.

IEEE

IEEE, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, is the largest professional engineering body in the world and has a world wide focus. I am a Senior Member and have always found it worthwhile. In the days before the Internet was as useful as it is now, they were the best source of regular and up to date news about technology advances and what was happening in the world of technology.

IEEE – Advancing Technology for Humanity

IEEE Collabratec

IEEE Collabratec

A great example of this is the IEEE Collabratec platform. This fosters Collaboration over a very wide range of topics including ethics. I’m a regular contributor and was very pleased to see the figures for the its use in 2017. Check out the graphic below. Click on it to get a larger version that will be easier to read.

Boeing

SpaceX

The next company is SpaceX who are also involved in rocket and satellite design. They are looking at 4425 satellites in low earth orbit.

SpaceX Satellite Back Haul

SpaceX believe that they can speed up Internet Back Haul by reducing the number of router hops required. The example above shows 5 space hops (including up and down) replacing 14 conventional hops. You can read more at SpaceX satellite Internet project status update.

OneWeb

And OneWeb are looking to provide Global Internet access, especially to the developing world.

What I found very encouraging is the degree to which Boeing, SpaceX and OneWeb are collaborating and cooperating in order to make sure that they can coexist and all provide effective services. This included adjusting planned orbital heights and frequency usage.

So great to see another example of just how much Collaboration can enable opportunities, even when the collaborators look like competitors.

Doug Engelbart

There are lot’s of people who have done enormous service to the world through their inventiveness and willingness to share with other. A good example is Dennis Richie who I gave a tribute to in 2011 and who gave us the C Programming Language, one of the most used computing languages even today.

Doug Engelbart holding an early computer mouse

I recently came across Doug Engelbart who passed away 4 years ago and is responsible for inventing many of the ideas behind modern computing including:

Design Led Innovation

Traditional Product Development comes up with the product idea, does the development, gets it into production and then tries to find customers to sell it to.

Design Led Innovation tries to turn that process around so the actual needs of the customer or user become part of both the product definition and the business model development. If you haven’t already heard of it, check out the Business Model Canvas.

I get the opportunity to present on topics like Innovation to Business Groups and even MBA programs and one of the interesting statistics I use is that the number one area for Innovation in the world today is the Business Model.

How Does Design Led Innovation Work?

So how does this all work?

Design Led Innovation Process

In Design Led Innovation, the expected outcome is that when you engage with your customer, and begin to understand their needs, then you can start to offer them something that has much higher value for them and allows you to get a better price for offering that much higher value. The outcome is the classic win:win that great business is meant to deliver. And it is a key factor in not getting caught in the classic commodity service price war with the client’s purchasing officer driving the process.

It is also a continuous process. One description is that it is like “rebuilding the plane while it is in flight”.

Sounds scary, but the results seem to show it is well worth doing.

Design Led Innovation session at SEBN

At a recent SEBN breakfast session we heard from Tricomposite about their experience of using Design Led Innovation to revolutionise their business and not only service their existing customers better, but offer them products they didn’t even know they wanted and create a much better value offering for them than they had ever considered before. And this has opened up potential market offerings to other customers who they would never have considered they could work with.

Here are the themes they explored in finding this offering:

focus on designers, not buyers

test is time pressure leads to design mistakes

test is rapid full-sized final material prototypes were valuable

test if there was room for service level agreements

test if there was room for collaborative design

And the answer to 4 of these was a resounding yes. Only the service level agreement test failed. Basically, customers expect service as a given. But the rest has opened up a complete rethink of their business. In fact, they shared that it was their existing perspective on their business that proved to be their biggest limiting factor.

Business Model Canvas

Rethinking the Business Model is a key component of Design Led Innovation. But not as an end in itself. Only after understanding your customer’s real needs can you determine how to make it easier to do business with them.

I recommend getting the Business Model Canvas book and taking advantage of the free downloads at Strategyzer. Here is a example of one of their tools.

DSLR or Digital Single Lens Reflex Camera

Ignoring the play on words, the light camera is a major breakthrough in the use of multiple optical viewpoint cameras to create synthetic images that can be taken with something the size of a smart phone and rivals DSLR Camera photographs.

And spoiler alert, I’m getting one as soon as I can. Read on to find out why.

I enjoy photography and appreciate the balance between the size and convenience of my phone camera and the control and quality of image possible in my DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) camera.

For a Film SLR camera the sensor is the film. For the DSLR Camera the sensor is a digital image sensor CCD or Charge Coupled Device. These cameras use precision ground lenses and are capable of high levels of control and image quality. They also don’t fit in your pocket unless you have a very large one.

Below is a high quality rendering of a DLSR Camera provided by David McSweeney of Guru Camera. Much appreciated David. Click on the picture to get a full size version.

DSLR Digital Camera Section

The Light Camera

Light – a new camera concept

I am very grateful to Dr Rajiv Laroia who co-founded Light. Not only has he developed a breakthrough concept in portable digital photography, but he has been very open about how he went about it and how it works. This is an excellent example of the new Collaboration landscape we now work in. He took his idea to experts to validate it rather than hiding it and hoping no-one would steal it.

he solved a problem he had – it represented a practical need he understood

he got expert advice early

it required a significant shift from the best of breed technology in place now

he knows his first version is just that

there is a long term product strategy in place

he is teaching the world how to do it so that he has first mover advantage rather than a monopoly

The last point is interesting for me. The days of monopolies are coming to an end. The days where a Brand could overcome deficiencies in an offering aren’t yet over but they are fading. Today you can source reviews from peers and industry forums and a Brand can’t as easily dominate a market just by reputation or marketing blurb. The products have to be as good as the Brand claims they are.

Dr Rajiv Laroia – co-founder of Light

So back to Light. Dr Rajiv Laroia has started something we will all benefit from. The concept is brilliant and the results and funding are in place to make is commercially successful.

Will we see it in a smart phone soon? I can see cut down versions of this concept being deployable in the very near future. The processing power is the challenge in a low power hand held device that is also doing cellular communications. So battery life versus quick availability of the finished pictures is the trade-off right now.

Is it doable in the long run? Absolutely!

Light in Action

Here are some videos covering the development journey, the first commercial version and the use of the camera.

Schools Today

The modern school as we know it was designed to provide workers for the expanding paradigm of the Industrial Revolution. That is, the first Industrial Revolution. We are now up to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, also known as Industry 4.0. So how well are we doing 3 Industrial Revolutions later?

Industry 4.0

First of all, lets look at the positives. Basic education has been an overwhelming success. A foundation level of literacy, numeracy and essential mathematics skills has served us really well for several generations. And it will continue to though the need for it is reducing because so much of our modern world does a lot of this for us. This is of course the developed world. We still have a third of the planet living in abject poverty and that is a challenge in itself. But the baseline education we all get at primary school works for the vast majority of people. I know there are exceptions who have both physical and intellectual challenges but it works on the whole.

So where is the issue?

Applied Learning

The real issue is when we start to get past basic education, the foundation we all benefit from, and start to move into Applied Learning or Interest Based Learning. Someone who is going to be a brilliant dancer might not benefit so much for advanced mathematics training. So we already allow for this in course selection. By VCE and the like there is a lot of selection going on. The same at University.

The issue comes back to what we are preparing students for. Funding policy drives a lot of decisions. You can’t keep a school open if the subjects you teach or how you teach them are not aligned with the funding model. You may not even get a sick bed or enough toilets (yes I know of one example of this)! And at present. we don’t seem to have governments with a strong view to to doing anything in schools except exclude faith and culture based learning and enforce the idea that alternative sexual orientations are preferred. At least this is how it looks to the community. And all this means we are not equipping students for the Jobs of the Future or the Industries of Tomorrow (or even today in many cases).

I present to Secondary Schools and Universities including MBA programs and recently to a Primary School. Schools matter. So it is time to start fixing a broken system. And it isn’t teachers and principals I am talking about here, it is funding policy.

Universities are funded based on peer reviewed papers and student numbers by class type. There is no requirement for either to be industry relevant. This has been the case for a while and we now find ourselves where this funding policy leads:

Australia has the lowest rate of publicly funded research commercialisation in the world

Australia has the lowest rate of academia to Industry engagement in the world

Put differently, the currently funding put into public research and academia structures is failing completely. The model is broken. And I’ve heard this repeatedly for the past half a decade so it isn’t just me.

Digital Readiness

Yet Digital Literacy in Australia continues to decline as the rest of the world gets ready for the next round of jobs and value creation while we fall behind. Everyone agrees that this is the wave of the future. But no action. The last policy discussion was in 2008!

The latter has this graph of our current ranking in Digital Competitiveness (we used to be known as the country of early adopters).

Australian Digital Competitiveness

I hope you notice that the most competitive economies in the world are also the most digital ready! Check out the Global Competitiveness Report summarised on Wikipedia to see the relativities. This is also why the current destruction of the capability of the NBN, or National Broadband Network, looks like economic sabotage when you consider how it is going to limit jobs growth potential and further stifle Digital Readiness.

It isn’t like this problem is new or not understood. It seems the current policy split is between:

if it costs money you can’t have it because we can’t afford it

protecting the borders is more important than ensuring there is something worth protecting inside them

lets redesign our social fabric because we can

Yes I know I have shown them in extreme profile, but this is where these ideas ultimately end up. And none of them are in the interest of Australia’s long term future. I don’t think being Digital Ready for the Future is restricted to a single gender, ethnic group or demographic nor mandated or precluded by your faith background or sexual orientation or any of a large number of other factors.

“Tomorrows jobs will be created by the workers, not companies“. Ray Keefe 2016.

You will see a similar quote below for primary schools. But this is the new paradigm. It is already here. This isn’t tomorrow. This is now. What is a Lean Digital Startup? It is creating your own job!

So this has been a long post already but there is one more element I want to share. And this is an initiative which I am hoping will be able to make a difference.

Tech Schools

No this is not a nostalgic return to the past, just using the same name for a very new approach.

I am pleased to announce that the Casey Tech School Strategic Charter was signed last week. I am one of 2 Industry Representatives involved in the process. Hopefully this will grow significantly once the foundations have been firmly established. And this same process is happening in other regions of Victoria.

So if they are reusing the name, what are they now using it for?

The Casey Tech School will use funding from the Victorian State Government to establish an advanced learning center to augment existing schools. This will include Digital Ready learning opportunities and will support student interest learning and not just a fixed curriculum. The details of how to get this high leverage education facility interfaced with existing school activities is still to be worked out. But the core idea is that if there isn’t enough money for every school to do this independently, then spend one lot of money and let every school take advantage of it.

Here are a couple of photos of the event.

Casey Tech School Charter Signed

Successful Endeavours Support the Casey Tech School

And this isn’t the only interesting school initiative going on right now.

Primary Schools Step Up

As an example of where primary school teaching is going, I was recently involved in a Mini-Mart run by Dandenong Primary School. The Grade 5 students did a survey of the grade 3 and 4 students to determine goods they could design, build and sell to them. There were rules covering design elements, what constituted a sufficient offering and even things like Warranty. Then they made the goods, set up stalls, and in a series of waves tried selling to the same grade 3 and 4 students they had surveyed.

Brilliant.

And in between waves, they got advice on OH&S, selling and influencing techniques from a teacher who could have been presenting to an MBA program. I had to wait another 40 years after my Primary School experience before I got training in business skills as good as this. Needless to say, I was very impressed and it made me wonder why we aren’t doing this across the board.

Mini-market moguls

Dandenong Primary School’s Grade 5 and 6 students have explored the process of creating, producing and marketing their own products.
The students hosted a mini-market as part of their school studies, surveying students from Grade 3 and 4 to see what products would sell and then competing to see who could sell the most.

“These children are going to have to invent their own jobs…”

The result was an impressive array of fun and appealing items from bookmarks and fridge magnets to squishy balls and multi coloured slime.

The event was supported by four local employers who judged each team on their product design and quality, stall design and customer service.

Ray Keefe from Successful Endeavours was joined by Anthony Di Battista from Hilton Manufacturing, Marcus Barber from Looking Up Feeling Good and Chelsie Dickson from Cirque Design.

“These children are going to have to invent their own jobs so it’s great they’re thinking about this very important challenge now,” Mr Keefe said.

Dandenong Primary School looks set to produce some impressive entrepreneurs of the future if the
success of this project is anything to go by.

Jobs of the Future

And if you want a really interesting view of what this could be like 10 years from now, I recommend readings Rainbow’s End by Vernor Vinge. Enjoy. Its not just the education component, its the whole idea that jobs just wont exist any more!

Innovation In Australia

I had the opportunity to take part in an Innovation session run at Trajan Scientific and Medical. This covered both the Innovation philosophy they operate under and also included a site tour and explanation of the practical aspects of building highly collaborative relationships.

3D printing allows us to make mechanical products in one hit without tooling

You can lease a micro-factory for a day or buy a 3D printer for a fraction of the cost of 5 years ago

Personalised products – such as talking a picture of you ear and getting custom ear bud made at a very affordable price

Rolls Royce now sell engines as a service

IoT now means we can instrument everything so it allows improvements in everything. This includes productivity, service, response and learning from actual product use
So now anyone can become a product designer and manufacturer

The 4th industrial revolution is not just for large organisations but individuals can also now become niche product entrepreneurs

It also allows reshoring of products that went to Asia and can now come back

Autodesk are now moving to a subscription model with cloud services so you can buy a 1 month subscription if that is all you need

You can now make products at the point of need rather than mass produce in one spot and ship around the world

And designers from around the world can now contribute to projects and the manufacture can now happen anywhere

autodesk

Trajan

Andrew Gooley presented a session on Trajan’s approach to innovation and collaboration.

Andrew Gooley of Trajan

Trajan stands for science interfacing with society. They have focused on making scientific based components for products and particularly boron and silicate glass items for laboratories, patient samples and individual users needs. They have multiple plants around the world. It is not the product that defines them but the collaboration process. Trajan was a Roman Emperor and introduced many desirable social innovations.

Trajan now see collaboration as the core commercialisation competence they have and is the primary competitive advantage they have. An example is the way they have worked with the University of Adelaide photonics department to use their facility, run it as a commercial entity, use it for their own manufacture and also improve it using the technology they have already developed for their own manufacturing facilities around the world.

An example is collecting and analysing patient samples in the home. Then extending that to third world countries and remote communities to improve their health outcomes. Or reducing premature births by facilitating in home health monitoring to identify conditions that lead to that and providing timely dietary feedback.

Their primary collaboration relationship building technique is to fire bullets before you fire cannons. So try something small to even determine if it can work at all. Not every university or other private company are capable of collaboration.

Their other strength is the ability to run their manufacturing so that they can build to order today. Industry 4.0

I was personally impressed during the tour and came away feeling excited about the possibilities for Australian companies to compete on a global basis if we go about it the right way.

SEBN

South East Business Networks

One of the key statistics about the Australian business landscape is that we are last in the world for collaboration. All sorts of collaboration. If you doubt this, just think about how much political collaboration you see here compared to overseas.

The video above is a series of snippets covering why SEBN is a great idea and the value that I get from being a part of it.

Some related statistics that bring home to me the importance of networking are some OECD statistics that place Australia:

last at number 181 for publicly funded research commercialisation,

last for academia to industry engagement,

number 3 for problem solving,

number 13 for Innovation,

but number 106 for commercialisation.

If you are wondering where these figures come from, they are based on statistics collected by the OECD and were among the key facts presented at Smart Manufacturing 2016.

So it isn’t our innovation or problem solving that is the issue. It is commercialisation and a key part of this is collaboration which we are measurably worst at.

One of the solutions is to get business leaders to actually get to know each other and learn from each other. This builds familiarity and trust and can break down the barriers we seem to naturally have here when it comes to collaboration. This is one of the key objectives of SEBN which stands for the South East Business Networks.

I have been attending SEBN sessions for the past 6 years and it has helped be grow as a business leader.

Casey Cardinia Business Awards

The City of Casey and Shire of Cardinia have been actively collaborating and cooperating for many years now. This is an inspiring example of how to buck the current Australian trend against collaboration. And one of the ways they are doing this is with a combined business program including the Casey Cardinia Business Group and the Casey Cardinia Business Awards.

The Casey Cardinia Business Awards Finalists for 2015 were announced in August and last night the winners were announced at a gala dinner at the Cranbourne Turn Club. We are pleased to let let you know that we won the Business and professional Services Award.